"
He regained his smile on the way across the room, and the young creature
behind the samovar, who had had a moment's fear that she must deal with
Severity, found that a beaming Affability--though personally unticketed in
her memory--was, after all, her happier allotment. In her reaction she took
it all as a personal compliment. She could not know, of course, that it was
but a piece of calculated expressiveness, fitted to a 'particular social
function and doubly overdone as the wearer's own reaction from the
sprouting indignation of the moment before. She hoped that her hair, under
his sweeping advance, was blowing across her forehead as lightly and
carelessly as it ought to, and that his taste in marquise rings might be
substantially the same as hers. She faced the Quite Unknown, and asked it
sweetly, "One lump or two?"
"The dickens! How do _I_ know?" he thought. "An extra one on the
saucer, please," he said aloud, with his natural resonance but slightly
hushed. And his blue eyes, clear and rather cold and hard, blazed down, in
turn, on her.
"Why, what a nice, friendly fellow!" exclaimed Mrs.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25